BipCoin, alive and well. But Dot-Bip decentralized DNS is not happening.

TL;DR
We didn’t make enough in donations to even begin to get Dot-Bip decentralized DNS done, so I’m returning the donations to everyone. I’m no longer trying decentralized DNS, but will consult with anyone who wants to give it a shot.)

WHAT HAPPENED?
So, the DotBip Indiegogo fundraiser ended. We raised $1125. But I have already returned all the donations. (That’s why the Indiegogo now says “$0 USD raised by 0 backers.”)

Did it now, a few hours before the campaign ends, because you can’t do it as easily after the campaign ends.

I appreciate everyone who donated.

I do have a few DotBip buttons, if you donated and you DO want a button for what turned out to not exist, let me know.

DOING THE MATHS
What we raised is nice. But it is not only extraordinarily far short of our goal of $175,000, It’s also very far short of the bare minimum we’d need to maybe scrape by & take a lot longer and bootstrap this into existence, which I have calculated at around $30,000. I said in the Indiegogo page, “If we can fund 1/4 to 2/3 of our goal, we will likely be able to get this done, it’s just going to take a lot longer. And by then, free speech could be varying shades of illegal, so it may note be easy / possible to get this done then.”

It would cost between 10k and 20k just to pay our way onto enough exchanges to have this be anything approaching distributed, let alone decentralized. And that would be before even one line of code is written. Less than a dozen exchanges take CryptoNote coins. And of that less than a dozen, the one exchange we’re on is one of three that does not charge coins to list. Listing cost on the ones that charge is between 3 and 12 BTC, and some of them charge several Bitcoin to simply CONSIDER your coin, with no refund if they say no!

It’s hard to say what it would cost to get on all these exchanges, because they don’t advertise that they charge. And sometimes they charge that “consideration fee”, then charge even more if they say yes. And they’d probably charge even more if your goal was to get on every exchange you could. That’s why I didn’t mention this practice in the Indiegoo or whitepaper….I didn’t want to tip my hat to any exchanges and have them jack it up when I went to get on.

I did write all of the exchanges that take CryptoNote coins. I did not mention of money but told them about Dot-Bip and our plan to stop censorship, and asked if they’d add us. None of them wrote me back.

So, yeah, I didn’t raise enough money to make this happen. However, unlike most people in liberty and in cryptocurrency who raise money but fall short of raising enough to do the goal, I returned the money….Even though in the Indiegogo listing, I said I would NOT. I added this the first week of the 8-week fundraiser:

I thought about it and I don’t feel right keeping that money, even though I would be contractually able to with all but the first 3 donations (they came in before that part was added.) I don’t feel right because I’m not sure everyone read the whole campaign before donating.

POST-GAME ANALYSIS:
BipCoin is doing well, and was doing well even before the idea of Dot-Bip came up. BipCoin has been one of the more profitable coins to mine for months, and most days, we are the most profitable CryptoNote coin to mine.

Most projects I’m involved in have a larger interest base than Dot-Bip did. From the low response to Dot-Bit, and the low response to MeowBit, the kick-ass software we actually made two years ago for Namecoin (and MeowBit is currently the only working system-wide easy to use resolver for Namecoin), I really think that decentralized DNS will NEVER catch on. People would have to do something on both the webmaster and web user end BEFORE mass website censorship happens. And I am now CONVINCED that people will not give a hoot about it until it’s too late.

I think that the coolest Bitcoin Millionaires could come out tomorrow with the exact system I’m describing in the whitepaper, or something better, and I think that response would be tepid.

(Anyone is welcome to use ideas from my whitepaper, of course. I really just want to see this happen. It’s been a passion of mine. If you DO plan to do this, contact me, and I’ll consider consulting if you want.)

I also predict that ultimately the answer will be replacing domain names with something else. Domain names are so 1994.

Why do we even need domain names anyway? I think they’ll be mostly obsolete within a few years. Probably replaced by QR codes. But still to really work right and be censorship resistant, there will need some sort of decentralized system. QR codes have the advantage of being not something to squat. But then there’s the issue of deciding who is the canonical QR for a given site. Could still be registered on the blockchain, and etc. etc. And need a way to call up with a human memorable mnemonic system somehow.

My thought to anyone doing this is it should maybe NOT be a CryptoNote coin, even though conventional blockchains don’t offer anonymity. Because it’s easier to get non-CryptoNote coins on a lot of exchanges without paying.

I’m sure someone will say to me “but you could blah blah blah.” But I’m done. I’ve been kicking against the pricks of decentralized DNS for years, and the fact that most people won’t care until it’s too late. I’m on to other things.